Today's broadband service architectures tend to be heavily dependent upon the functionality of customer premises equipment (CPE) devices as a service enabler. For example, a customer, such as a business or residential customer, may purchase a number of CPE devices that may be used to obtain broadband service from a broadband service provider, such as a wireless router, a firewall, a dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) server, etc.
CPE devices, however, can result in a number of issues for the broadband service provider. For instance, the CPE devices can be difficult to maintain and configure for the customers, potentially resulting in a large number of customer help desk calls. Additionally, CPE devices may restrict network upgrades as a CPE device purchased by a customer may be incompatible with a new network service or protocol that the service provider may wish to implement. Additionally, functions such as network address translation (NAT) by the CPE devices may prevent visibility, by the broadband server provider, to the number and type of attached end-user devices (e.g., set-top-boxes, personal computers, laptops, tablet computers, etc.).